historiography and History of science

History of science and technology

For chronological accounts of the development of science and technology, see history of science and history of technology.

The history of science and technology (HST) is a field of history which examines how humanity's understanding of the natural world (science) and ability to manipulate it (technology) have changed over the millennia. This field of history also studies the cultural, economic, and political impacts of scientific innovation.

Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, starting primarily with William Whewell, as a way to communicate the virtues of science to the public. In the early 1930s, after a famous paper given by the Soviet historian Boris Hessen, effort was focused into looking at the ways in which scientific practices were allied with the needs and motivations of their context. After World War II, extensive resources were put into teaching and researching the discipline, with the hopes that it would help the public better understand both science and technology as they came to play an exceedingly prominent role in the world. In the 1960s, especially in the wake of the work done by Thomas Kuhn, the discipline began to serve a very different function, and began to be used as a way to critically examine the scientific enterprise. At the present time it is often closely aligned with the field of Science studies.

Modern mathematical science and physical engineering as it is understood today took form during the scientific revolution, though much of the mathematics and science was built on the work of the Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indians and Muslims. See the main articles History of science and History of technology for these respective topics.

Historiography of science

The historiography of science usually refers to the study of History of Science in its disciplinary aspects and practices (methods, theories, schools) and to the study of its own historical development ("history of History of Science", i.e., the history of the academic discipline called History of Science). Alternatively, and confusingly enough, "historiography of science" may be used to refer to the very discipline of History of Science, in such a way as to differentiate the actual history of scientific events (whatever happened in the past, the so-called res gestae) from what we write about them (the historia rerum gestarum). Thus, one may say that "the historiography of science has gone through major changes since the publication of this or that book" (meaning of course that it is not the actual history of science that has changed, but the discipline that concerns itself with studying that history - which, unfortunately, is also called History of Science).

Since the mid-19th century, ideas about the history of science and technology have been tied to important philosophical and practical questions, such as whether scientific conclusions should be regarded as progressing towards truth, and whether freedom is important for scientific research. Put broadly, the field as a whole examines the entire spectrum of human experience relating to science and technology, and how our understanding of that experience has changed over time. Historiography of science is a much more recent discipline than history of science, although they have exerted great mutual influence on each other, through the study of theories, changes in theories, disciplinary and institutional history, the cultural, economic, and political impacts of science and technology, and the impact of society on scientific practice itself.